yeah, most likely the ash car thing was from something much closer (if it even was ash, i only saw the photo briefly before i had coffee and I don't care enough to look it up again). And weird smells can be all sorts of things. That can be filed under shit that happens from time to time in all sorts of random places for all sorts of reasons.

Our brains are wired to link things and create patterns and connections and the modern world of social media tends to feed into that wayyyyy too much.